This Earth Day let’s celebrate by giving back to the wildlife in your area.
My best memories as a child were hunting frogs in the creek on our small farm in Oregon and catching small garter snakes next door at my grandparents place. As a young child of 5 years old I built a small pond by our house and as I caught frogs I would turn them loose in my pond. Many, many, moons later I am still building ponds for frogs and toads. Some things you never outgrow. I have found that if you build a wildlife refuge they will come!
When our family moved from green Oregon to the desert, I was very sad. I missed my frogs and non-venomous snakes. Even though my parents took us to the lake many times each summer there were no frogs there. Years past and I had children of my own and someone told me there were frogs up in the creeks in the nearby Red Rock mountains. So my children loaded up their homeschool books and lunch into backpacks and we went hiking, looking, searching for frogs. I believe I was more excited than my children when we found our first leopard frog in that small desert creek!
Just like in the scene from the Pixar movie “Hoppers” where Mabel’s grandmother Tanaka teaches her to sit, look and listen to nature, I did this with my children and other homeschool families. We would hike to a wilderness location then sit quietly writing and drawing about what we were experiencing.
I am a grandmother now and about 7 years ago my husband and I moved out onto property just below the treeline in the NE Mountains above Kingman AZ. As with every home I have owned in the city or here in Arizona I built a wildlife pond and added cattails and lilypads with shallow rocky areas for critters to land on or climb out if they fell in. In the larger ponds I add a few goldfish to control mosquitoes. With all my ponds the birds came first. Before long I had Arizona Red Spotted Toads singing me to sleep. A couple of years later I heard something new one night at my pond, it was a Great Basin Spadefooted Toad! I felt like a child again having such awesome visitors to my pond.
Along with many different species of songbirds some of our other pond visitors at our homestead have been, hummingbirds, roadrunners, quail, bats, owls, bobcats, deer, badger, snakes, lizards, toads, bees, chipmunks, and once a migrating Sora spent a week layover at our pond.
Even within the city you can make a small refuge area in your yard. A small shallow pond with rocks is all you need. Pick a quiet area of your yard viewable from a window or glass door, preferable with some shade. No trees in your yard, no problem, plant some bird seed around the pond and let it grow tall. The seeds and flowers that grow will attract birds. Buy a single sprinkler and set it up to spray over the area and water a short while each day. On a budget, try a concrete mixing pan from Home Depot. Dig a hole and place the top edge at ground level and fill it 3/4 full of some large rocks or bricks and make an island and exit ramp so no one drowns. In time you can add larger rocks and desert like driftwood around the pond for beauty and texture. Hang a bird feeder nearby and a hummingbird feeder in the shade under the branch of a tree or patio. You would be amazed at what shows up as you create a little oasis in your own yard!
Trust me, in all the years I have built wildlife refuges within the city or country I have never been disappointed! This Earth Day let’s Build a Wildlife Refuge so they can come!
Need ideas? Contact Caroline Thomas at abbnormalstoires@gmail.com.
